Crystal Force

by Joe Ducie

  ‘What? Really?’ Irene felt the fatigue and strain of the last few weeks like a noose around her neck. She was tired, tense, and Tristan’s paranoia made the trapdoor beneath her feet creak. Any moment now she was half convinced the ground would be swept from under her feet. ‘Are the cameras really that good?’

  ‘Not good,’ Tristan said. ‘Smart. Clever. The software running on these camera networks was developed for use in complex environments under time-restricted conditions, like airports. Mass population centres and places with heavy crowd traffic. It’s actually replaced a lot of security guards in the major ports. It can catch people not only by face recognition but by how they carry themselves. The damn things not only recognise your face and height but can tell if you’re trying to hide or acting suspicious.’

  Drake cursed. ‘So we not only have to disguise our faces, but act like we’re not being hunted by the Alliance at all.’ He grimaced. ‘This … won’t be easy.’

  ‘I’d say impossible.’ Tristan looked at Drake sideways. ‘But then I would’ve said escaping the Rig was impossible, too.’

  ‘That ATM is Alliance-owned,’ Drake said. ‘I don’t feel guilty about robbing them, do you?’

  Irene shuffled from foot to foot behind a hedge across from the bank, realised she was looking guilty, and forced herself to stop. The traffic on the road was sparse, but they were no longer in the forest, and if what Tristan had said about the cameras was true …

  ‘What about the cameras?’ she asked.

  Drake shrugged. ‘We’ll be out of here before anyone arrives, and I don’t think the Alliance are really going to want to show the general population what I’m about to do.’

  ‘And what’s that?’ Tristan asked, but the look on his face suggested he already knew.

  Drake raised his right hand, keeping his left tucked in his pocket, and stared at his fingers. He concentrated, frowning, until a subtle glow began to flow under his skin, through his veins, as if his hand had been tattooed with currents of electric blue ink.

  ‘Make a withdrawal,’ Drake said. ‘I reckon we’re owed back pay for all that work we did on the Rig, eh?’

  A steady stream of customers entered and exited the bank. They were going to have to be quick and out of the area in minutes, if they were going to have any hope of escaping the Alliance.

  We have to do this, Irene opened her mouth to say.

  ‘Yes, we do,’ Drake muttered.

  Irene blinked. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You said we have to do this. And you’re right, we do.’

  Drake shouldered the backpack and stepped out from behind the hedge and onto the sidewalk. His palm ablaze with blue light, he strolled across the road with his head held tall, as if he robbed a bank every day before lunch.

  Tristan gave Irene a significant look, a mixed canvas of worry and fear. ‘Did he just …’

  ‘He either read my mind,’ she whispered, rubbing her throat, ‘or he knew what I was going to say before I said it.’

  ‘What’s happening to him, do you think?’

  Irene could only shake her head. ‘He didn’t realise, did he? He thought I said it aloud. I was about to say it …’

  Tristan slipped his hand into Irene’s and squeezed her fingers. ‘He absorbed a lot of that stuff. Way more than you or … or anyone, from what we understand. Hell, he should be raving in a cage or dead. God only knows what it’s doing to him.’

  Irene wasn’t so sure even God knew. ‘Look, he’s at the cash machine.’

  In the two weeks he’d been on the run with his friends, hiding in the forest and sending Tristan for food, Drake had tried to figure out just what he could do with his crystal talent. It was slow, nervous work. Some days he could click his fingers, light up the clearing, and create a buffer against the cold. Other days he had burnt his jumpsuit and scorched the earth. Using his power had also made Irene and Tristan uncomfortable, so he’d limited his experiments. It also made Drake slightly nervous he was losing his mind, like Alan Grey and Carl Anderson. But through trial and error, he’d managed a rough sort of control. If he thought hard enough about what he wanted, the power would flow.

  He had managed some truly remarkable things. Arrows of hard crystal which he had hurled into trees, spheres of hot fire (which he hadn’t been certain wouldn’t explode, but given the choice between warmth and freezing to death, he’d taken the chance), and even buffers of air that provided protection from the wind. Shields of energy that had taken the bite out of the freezing nights.

  Drake stood in front of the ATM and stared at the screen for a long moment, his right palm glowing with ethereal light and his left hand shoved deep into his pocket. A tiny pinhole camera stared back at him, and he wondered if his face was lighting up security screens and pinging off Alliance satellites already.

  ‘Nothing for it.’ Drake clenched his glowing hand and drove it into the machine. The moulded plastic and keypad simply melted around his fist. He removed his other hand from his pocket and grasped the edge of the machine, where it met the bricks. With a grunt that was more frustration than effort, he ripped the console from the wall in a shower of dust, debris, and drops of hot plastic.

  As light as a feather, he thought, marvelling at the impossible strength in his arms. The melted plastic ran down his hand, but the light glowing within his skin protected him from harm. He couldn’t even feel the scalding heat.

  The crowd within the bank gaped at him like goldfish in a bowl. Drake offered them a wink and then tore the cash machine in half, right down the middle. Wires, machinery, and a whirlwind of red and green Canadian bank notes exploded from the guts of the cash beast.

  A siren wailed from within the bank, echoing down the street, and tyres squealed against the road. Drake tossed what was left of the machine aside and shook his hands, as if trying to dry them. The ethereal blue light faded, and the skin on his right hand was unblemished, whole and healthy. Pinpricks of light still danced slowly within the fingers on his left, the hand he’d been keeping in his pocket and out of sight.

  ‘That’s a worry,’ Drake muttered, glaring at his limb. ‘But not at the top of the list just yet.’

  The bank staff and customers had backed away from the glass window as the wail of the internal alarm echoed along the street. Drake unzipped his backpack and began to stuff cash down into its depths. He worked quickly, grabbing wads of notes from the ground. A lot of the smooth notes were melting from the heat, burning with blue flame, and giving off an acrid stink.

  He zipped up the backpack and took to his heels, dashing back across the street and weaving in and out of idling cars that had come to a stop on the road.

  Irene and Tristan stared at him solemnly when he ducked back behind the hedge.

  He gave them both a grin. ‘Right. That was dumb but necessary. Clothes and then somewhere to hide, yeah?’

  Chapter Three

  Shelter from the Storm

  ‘I think it’s safe to say the Alliance won’t be making that footage available to the public,’ Drake said, as he paused for breath a few blocks over from the bank. The pack dug into his shoulders, weighted down with cash and the drone, but he had barely broken a sweat. The Crystal-X is increasing my endurance … or just not letting me feel how knackered I really am.

  Irene had kept pace with him well, but Tristan was gasping for air. ‘You … you were quick back there,’ he panted. ‘But I think a few of the people in the bank recorded you on their phones.’

  Drake hadn’t considered that. ‘Well, then I guess the Alliance may have some explaining to do.’

  Tristan shrugged. ‘The Alliance controls most of the global wireless networks and the phone carriers. If they act quickly – and they will – then anyone trying to upload video is going to find themselves suddenly disconnected.’ He glanced up at the sky. ‘In fact, I bet we’re already under a dark spot.’

  ‘Dark spot?’ Irene asked.

  ‘They’ll have pulled the plug, basically,’ Tristan said. ‘
Over this whole area. That’s what happens when one company owns everything, all the networks, the hard lines … the politicians and the banks.’

  Shut down the phone service, Drake thought. And the wireless. Scary clever.

  ‘No phones, no wireless, for a good few miles.’ Tristan glanced at Drake. ‘It’s what I’d do, to stop something getting out. May actually work in our favour, if we get out of here quickly. Every phone has a camera, and don’t think for a moment the Alliance can’t tap into them. But with the network blacked out, we’re technically off the radar – for now.’

  Drake saw a man across the road glaring down at a small device in his hand. He held it up above his head, as if trying to coax a signal from the air. ‘Blimey, looks like they’ve done just that. Cheeky buggers being scary.’

  ‘Not as scary as footage of you pulling apart a building with your bare hands would be if it leaked,’ Tristan pointed out.

  ‘Just a small piece of a building,’ Irene offered.

  Drake laughed. ‘Barely part of the building at all. Come on, let’s duck into that op shop.’

  ‘That what shop?’ Tristan asked.

  Drake gestured down the road. ‘There. You know, donated clothes and whatnot. Get ourselves some new threads.’

  ‘Oh.’ Tristan pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

  Drake fell back, putting himself between Irene and Tristan and hunching his shoulders. He glanced through the shopfront and saw a young girl idling behind the counter, looking bored and flipping through the pages of a magazine. ‘Right. They’re not hunting you two, remember, so go in first. I’ll stay behind you and head into the changing rooms. Just bring me whatever clothes you think will fit.’

  A tiny bell chimed over the door when they entered, and the girl at the counter glanced up, smiled briefly, and looked back down at her magazine.

  Drake ducked behind a rack of suit pants and business shirts and strode quickly to the rear of the store and the curtained changing rooms. If she’s seen the news this morning … his heart hammered in his chest. This was dangerous, stopping in one place, but given the stunt at the bank and the tightening net, he couldn’t stay in the Rig jumpsuit. The Alliance knows you’re nearby, nattered a troublesome voice in his head. They’re coming.

  As he waited, Drake took a moment to look at himself in the long mirror on the wall. His jumpsuit was wet, torn, and dirty, and a fair bit of blood from the Rig had dried into the fabric, staining the green cloth almost black. He stared at his face – mouth set in a grim line, eyes bloodshot – and dug his left hand out of his pocket. The light still danced beneath his skin, but the skin wasn’t normal any more … it had changed over the last few days, ever since he’d started really practising what he could do with his power. The fingers of his left hand had hardened into a dark, obsidian crystal. The digits still worked just fine, but they were no longer flesh and bone – or even blood. Drake tapped them together and produced a dull ring, as if he’d tapped a fork against glass. He wasn’t sure if he was imagining it, but the crystal seemed to have spread further down the back of his hand and towards his wrist, since he’d last checked on it.

  It’s getting worse the more power I use, he thought. But what choice do I have?

  Drake cursed and shoved his hand back in his pocket. He thought he caught a brief flash of crimson in the pupils of his brown eyes reflected in the mirror, but when he looked again, he saw nothing.

  You absorbed a container of that stuff. ‘Shit,’ Drake said to his reflection. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’

  The wait behind the curtain seemed agonisingly long, hours in place of minutes, but Tristan soon stepped into the stall with a stack of jeans, T-shirts, and jumpers. Shuffling in the next stall told Drake Irene was changing.

  ‘Only two stalls,’ Tristan explained. ‘Irene tried to pull me into hers, but I was having none of that nonsense –’

  ‘I can hear you, you know,’ Irene’s voice chimed over the wall.

  Tristan grinned and threw a stack of clothes at Drake. ‘Girl at the counter started watching us. Better hurry.’

  Drake stripped down to his boxer shorts and pulled on a dark pair of jeans, torn at the cuffs but serviceable, with plenty of pockets. Pockets were good. Being on the run, he could only take whatever he could carry. Keeping his left hand with the crystal fingers hidden from Tristan, he pulled on a white shirt and a grey woolly jumper. The dry clothes almost felt like a hot shower, washing away the grime and the chill of the last two weeks. Almost.

  ‘Everything OK in there?’ the girl from the counter asked. ‘Should only be one in a stall at a time, really.’

  Drake and Tristan stared at each other for a moment, and then Drake shrugged. He picked up the backpack and stepped out of the stall.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said to the girl. Cyndy, her name badge read. ‘Sorry, Cyndy. You guys don’t have any gloves and, like, boots or something, do you?’

  Drake watched her face but he saw no glimmer of recognition in her eyes. She looked only a year or two older than him, pretty, and Drake guessed she hadn’t been keeping up with local events that morning.

  ‘You going to buy those?’ she asked, nodding at the clothes he was wearing. Price tags stuck up from under his collar and on the belt loops of his jeans.

  ‘Sure are. We were painting walls all morning, me and my friends,’ he said. ‘And ruined our overalls. Just need something for the day.’

  Cyndy shrugged. ‘Gloves are over here, so are shoes. You don’t sound like you’re Canadian.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Drake said. ‘I’m on holiday over from London.’

  ‘You were painting on your holiday?’

  ‘It’s a … painting holiday,’ Drake said, mentally kicking himself and fairly certain he deserved to get caught again.

  ‘Right,’ Cyndy said and chuckled. ‘Just what you see on the wall here. The shoes are arranged in order of size. Gloves are tied together in pairs in that bin.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Drake made the gloves a priority and dug around in a large wine barrel, keeping his left side away from the sales girl, until he found a pair of thick leather gloves that looked big enough. He slipped his hands into the gloves and pulled his arms apart, breaking the little plastic tie holding the gloves together.

  ‘Guess you’re buying those, too,’ Cyndy said.

  ‘Guess so.’ Drake relaxed a bit, now that his incriminating left hand – and the blue sparks dancing unbidden beneath his skin – were hidden. ‘Just need a pair of shoes. Some hiking boots, or something.’

  ‘Going hiking on your painting holiday?’ she asked.

  ‘Ha, ha.’ He selected a pair of boots from the wall, simple lace-ups, and shoved his feet into them. A little tight, but we’re out of time.

  Tristan and Irene met him at the wall and selected some shoes for themselves – sneakers for Irene, and boots for Tristan. Under his arm, Tristan carried their bundled-up jumpsuits and old shoes.

  ‘That everything?’ Cyndy asked.

  ‘Let’s pay and be on our way,’ Drake replied. As he walked over to the counter, following Cyndy, he pulled the tags from his clothes. Irene and Tristan did the same, weaving through the aisles.

  As they passed a rack of hats, Drake snatched the first one he saw, a warm-looking beanie with flaps down over the ears. A colourful yarn bobble adorned the top of the beanie, and twin tassels, a good two feet long, swung down from the ear flaps and ended in strands of frayed wool. Drake shoved it onto his head and heard Irene giggle.

  He glanced at her sideways and retrieved an old man’s cap for her, black and grey, pulling it down over her auburn hair. Tristan took a bowler hat, of all things, and slipped it on. It was too big, but the tips of his ears and the rims on his glasses stopped the hat from falling over his eyes.

  Arranged on the front counter was a spinning display of sunglasses. Drake picked out a pair of simple wraparound Oakley’s and shoved them onto his face. Irene and Tristan again followed suit, selecting sunglasses for themselves. T
ristan chose a pair with almost comically large lenses to fit over his glasses.

  Cyndy had moved around the counter, and when she caught sight of the three of them with the hats and sunglasses, she burst out laughing. ‘So who are you lot hiding from?’

  Drake gave her an easy grin and handed over his handful of tags so she could start ringing up their purchases.

  ‘Good riddance,’ Tristan said and tossed their old bloodstained jumpsuits and Alliance-brand shoes into the nearest trash can. ‘Never again,’ he muttered.

  Never again, Drake agreed, making it a promise. I’ll die before setting foot in another Alliance hellhole.

  ‘Should we be worried that we’ll stand out because of the sunglasses?’ Irene asked Tristan. They strolled down the street, away from the op shop and the bank – sirens still wailing in the distance – and tried to look neither harried nor hurried. ‘I mean, even to the clever cameras?’

  Tristan shrugged. ‘We’re better off with them on.’ He didn’t sound certain. ‘The analytics software in the camera network is clever, but clever enough to pick out three people wearing sunglasses on a cloudy day?’ He shook his head. ‘Maybe … but it’ll take more time, which is what we need, right?’

  ‘It’s like we’ve escaped one prison for another,’ Drake muttered. The tassels on his hat swung across his chest as he walked. ‘We can’t hide from the cameras. Nothing’s ever private!’

  Tristan snorted. ‘Private. We gave up private twenty years ago for smart phones and social networks. Not that I’m complaining, I love all this tech stuff, but if you end up on the wrong side of the Alliance …’

  ‘I was thinking we should check into a hotel,’ Drake said. ‘You know, hide somewhere so obvious they wouldn’t think to look. But now I’m not so sure. The net’s tightening, isn’t it? From the drone in the forest to the bank. We needed money, but they’re closing in. If we don’t escape this city soon – now – then we won’t escape. Simple as that.’